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The Add Me! Newsletter *** ISSUE #53 ***
"Free tips for promoting your website and business"
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...THIS WEEK'S ARTICLE...
Cool Tricks for Keeping Track of
Your Internet Marketing
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August 20th, 1999 *** ISSUE #53 ***
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.....THIS WEEK'S ARTICLE.....
Cool Tricks for Keeping Track of
Your Internet Marketing
==================================
by Mark Joyner
CEO, Aesop Marketing Corporation
You publish a website. Your promote like
crazy. Things are happening, but you really
don't know why. You know that something
you are doing must be working, but you're
not sure which of the 1,000 campaigns you
ran last month are really paying off.
Does that sound like you?
A surprising number of Internet marketers
I speak to don't have a clue when it comes
to tracking their results. Many of them
that analyze their logs still don't use all
of the easy tools at their disposal for
keeping track of where their traffic is
coming from.
If this *is* you, don't feel bad. We've
*all* been there.
Now, assuming that you are analyzing your
logs and doing so with a tool that will
tell you the path people travel through your
site (if not - start now), then you are
faced with these two tricky problems:
1. How do I track the effectiveness of
my email campaigns? You'll notice that
a great number of hits to your site are
"no referrer" traffic. That is, people that
found your site either by reading an email
or just typing in your URL.
2. Knowing that not all hits are equal
(a visitor from one site may be more likely to
buy than one from another) how do I know
which hits are generating sales for me?
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These two problems can both be solved using
a simple tracking method that requires no
scripting. The only tool you need is your
log analysis tool which I hope you already
have.
To explain the utility of this tool let me
tell you a story about a friend who tried
to do this the hard way. He set up individual
pages for each of his promotion efforts.
That is, every time he tried a new form of
promotion he created a copy of his website
and linked his new promotion to it.
Needless to say, this took a long time. He
spent hours creating mirror sites. Hours
he could have been spending promoting!
When I told him this trick he didn't know
whether to thank me or kill me. He was so
embarrassed that he hadn't thought of it.
The first step to this technique capitalizes
on two little know features of HTML:
Fact 1:
Whenever you add a ? to the end of a .htm
or .html page, it has absolutely no effect
on the page that gets called up. That is,
if you were to write:
http://www.killertactics.com/index.htm
or
http://www.killertactics.com/index.htm?campaign1
The exact same page will come up. Go ahead
and try it now. Pretty cool, right?
WARNING:
You have to append this ? after the name
of an HTML file. It won't always work if you
do it at the end of a domain name (unless
your server supports it or you have special
scripting - which is what we're trying to
avoid - you want something universal and easy,
right?)
Fact 2:
Even though the same page is served when
you do this, your server logs treat them as
two different pages!
So, every time someone clicks on that special
URL you will be able to know without question.
Now, how can you use this in your marketing?
A *great* many ways, but let me touch on
some of the most important ones. By the
time we're done you'll be on fire with new
ideas for your marketing.
Here are a few to get you started:
1. Email
Remember how we talked about the problem of
tracking email campaigns? This is the
solution. You simply create a unique code
for each email campaign you have (no, I
don't mean spam - I'm talking about
legitimate OPT-IN marketing here) and then
track the results in your log files. This
will not just tell you how many clicks the
campaign generated - it will also give you
a good idea about how many people ordered
as well. That is, you look at your report
of "paths traveled through site" and pay
attention to the path people took as a result
of that particular campaign.
For example, if you see many instances of:
(The numbers show the order in which people
viewed your pages - this is the "path
traveled through site".)
1. http://yoursite.com/index.htm?ad1
2. http://yoursite.com/page1.htm
3. https://yoursite.com/order.htm
And relatively fewer instances of:
1. http://yoursite.com/index.htm?ad2
2. http://yoursite.com/page1.htm
3. https://yoursite.com/order.htm
Then it is safe to assume ad1 is more
effective than ad2 *even if ad2 brought
in more raw traffic*!
Remember, not all hits are equal, right?
=============================================================
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When are you planning to upgrade to a Pentium III system?
You can EARN from the advice you give AND claim a Pentium III
for $699 or get a Cyrix M II-333 for FREE at Handtech.com.
Details at http://www.enlist.com/cgi-bin/re/handadd
=============================================================
2. Banner Campaigns
The same principle applies here. Just give
each campaign a unique code and you will
be able to track the effectiveness exactly
as you have above.
WARNING #2:
This is not a perfect system. You
need to look at your actual number of orders
and see if there is some congruence between
your number of order page visits and your
number of orders.
Also, there is a more effective way to track
this. Simply get some referral partner
tracking software and assign a different
referral code to each campaign. Then you
will know without question that the order came
as a result of the campaign.
However, referral partner software can be
difficult to set up if you're not a CGI wiz
and the best systems aren't cheap.
What I'm offering you here is an inexpensive
way to track your campaigns that only requires:
a. Your Imagination
b. A Log File Analysis Program
Can you think of some ways to immediately
apply this technique to your marketing
today? I challenge you to take the rest
of the day refining your marketing effort
using these techniques. You will be delighted
at the new insights you are shown. I bet
you will be surprised to find out which of
your campaigns are winners.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Article by Mark Joyner, CEO of Aesop Marketing
Corporation and creator of 1001 Killer Internet
Marketing Tactics - a *must have* tool for
anyone serious about doing business on the
Internet. Do yourself a favor and check this
one out today:
http://www.killertactics.com
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